Twenty-nine percent of startups in Boston were founded by women, 9 percent above the international average. The city lost to Chicago by a single percentage point.

Eveline Buchatsky, Director of Techstars Boston, a startup accelerator company, told Fortune she credits a large part of Boston’s numbers to the talent coming from Harvard and MIT.

“These feed the rest of the chain with good raw material that includes a lot of women,’’ said Buchatsky.

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Boston is also home to a number of prominent female investors, including Maia Heymann, senior managing director at CommonAngels, Nicole Stata, founder of Boston Seed and Jean Hammond, early ZipCar investor and principal at JPH Associates, according to the report.